Regarding Tobia's comment on Jesus being non-binary, my first thought was, "yeah but Jesus was circumcised. Soooo....." And the Gospels are full of references to Jesus' male gender. (I am aware of anthropological and cultural influences on identity.) If there is reference in the NT to Jesus' questioning his "maleness," particularly as it pertains to his messaging of love and forgiveness, please share. I follow your account because I admire and appreciate your grasp of the mystical path toward a more encompassing grasp of God and the universe. And while there is much to learn---much I don't know---the "identitarian" efforts to insert the unlikely (if not absurd) into the facts as we know them seems to diminish the effort. It can be enough for Jesus to be a "dude." Even a very masculine one . One who represented the universal soul and light of each gender, endlessly. That doesn't make him non-binary. It makes him distinctly binary with a message of fulsome light and spirit. Why can't that be enough? (Rhetorical question.)
Donna, thanks for your comment, and of course I can't speak to what Jacob Tobia might say, so here are just a few of my personal thoughts. First of all, speaking as someone who is both circumcised and nonbinary myself, I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. 😎 Just a reminder that nonbinary gender is something that shows up across all people regardless of anyone's bodily sex.
I'm aware that many people like to project on Jesus qualities that they find meaningful: Jesus has been depicted as a shaman, a magician, enlightened, feminist, socialist, capitalist, and (less happily) as an American nationalist. I suppose these and other ways of thinking about Jesus tell us much more about the person doing the talking than about Jesus himself. There are also people who believe St. Paul was gay, which again seems to be mostly a matter of speculation, but perhaps a speculation that can be meaningful to some people.
So maybe in response to "Why can't that be enough?"we can simply wonder, "Why not?" Is it really a problem if a Buddhist sees in Jesus an enlightened master, a woman sees in him a feminist, and a genderqueer person senses a nonbinary quality in his personality? It all points to one common quality: Jesus (and his words) matter — we all find Jesus and his teachings to be profoundly important. We can never know for sure (at least not while living on this earth) what Jesus may have really thought about gender — but we do know that he taught us all to be kind, loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving. Hopefully that's how we can all come together.
Regarding Tobia's comment on Jesus being non-binary, my first thought was, "yeah but Jesus was circumcised. Soooo....." And the Gospels are full of references to Jesus' male gender. (I am aware of anthropological and cultural influences on identity.) If there is reference in the NT to Jesus' questioning his "maleness," particularly as it pertains to his messaging of love and forgiveness, please share. I follow your account because I admire and appreciate your grasp of the mystical path toward a more encompassing grasp of God and the universe. And while there is much to learn---much I don't know---the "identitarian" efforts to insert the unlikely (if not absurd) into the facts as we know them seems to diminish the effort. It can be enough for Jesus to be a "dude." Even a very masculine one . One who represented the universal soul and light of each gender, endlessly. That doesn't make him non-binary. It makes him distinctly binary with a message of fulsome light and spirit. Why can't that be enough? (Rhetorical question.)
Donna, thanks for your comment, and of course I can't speak to what Jacob Tobia might say, so here are just a few of my personal thoughts. First of all, speaking as someone who is both circumcised and nonbinary myself, I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. 😎 Just a reminder that nonbinary gender is something that shows up across all people regardless of anyone's bodily sex.
I'm aware that many people like to project on Jesus qualities that they find meaningful: Jesus has been depicted as a shaman, a magician, enlightened, feminist, socialist, capitalist, and (less happily) as an American nationalist. I suppose these and other ways of thinking about Jesus tell us much more about the person doing the talking than about Jesus himself. There are also people who believe St. Paul was gay, which again seems to be mostly a matter of speculation, but perhaps a speculation that can be meaningful to some people.
So maybe in response to "Why can't that be enough?"we can simply wonder, "Why not?" Is it really a problem if a Buddhist sees in Jesus an enlightened master, a woman sees in him a feminist, and a genderqueer person senses a nonbinary quality in his personality? It all points to one common quality: Jesus (and his words) matter — we all find Jesus and his teachings to be profoundly important. We can never know for sure (at least not while living on this earth) what Jesus may have really thought about gender — but we do know that he taught us all to be kind, loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving. Hopefully that's how we can all come together.